It is either very inconvenient, or more likely, beyond the ability of most amateur golfers to calculate their golf handicap. The calculation involves a significant amount of arithmetic and record keeping, and without some training, an electronic calculator and some time and effort many golfers would not be able to arrive at the correct answer.
Additional confusion is introduced when a player uses more that one golf course. The differences between golf courses in the course slope and course rating statistics results in additional confusion for most golfers. As a result, these factors are not typically taken into account, resulting in considerable inaccuracy in the calculation if made, and a lower likelihood that the calculation will be made where it is realized that the factors should be taken into account, but without the understanding of how they should be taken into account.
Still further confusion is introduced by the variety of methods of calculating handicap involving variations of the number of handicap differentials required to produce a handicap, and specifically which differentials should be used from among the available differentials.
As a result, most players only approximately or falsely calculate their handicap. Nevertheless, very few automated devices are available to aid the golfing public. The available devices have a number of flaws, including difficult data entry, failure to store sufficient data carrying over from prior games and failure to incorporate differentials derived from prior games. Moreover, known golf calculators fail to input, analyze and display peripheral data such as number of putts, highest score, lowest score and average game. Frequently, while handicap data is good for comparison to other golfers, it is the analysis of the peripheral data that provides actual benefit to the player's game.
A still further failure of known golf calculators is the lack of calculation and display of information related to the consistency of the golfer's game. Such data, based on standard deviation calculations, are important to provide the player with feed-back related to whether problems are chronic or sporadic. The consistency calculations and display are particularly important in a sport such as golf, where the ability to perform repeatedly at a consistent level is extremely important.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a golf calculator that can perform handicap calculations, that can perform consistency calculations, which performs peripheral calculations such as the average game and which provides record-keeping functionality.